The roof is on fire

Well, not the roof exactly. The oven. Oh, man, I almost had a disaster on my hands tonight!

I'm still working with the dog on his potty training, and taking him out to make a big deal out of peeing. "Yay, good boy! Good job!" I almost burned the MF'ing house down while I was at it! Jason went over to a friend's house, and was just going to make myself a little frozen pizza for dinner so I turned the oven on to pre-heat while I was taking care of the dog. Never got to putting the pizza inside, though, as the thing blew up and caught on fire! Not blew up like exploded, of course, or I wouldn't be sitting here typing this. But I had been outside with the dog, waiting for him to do his business, for a good ten minutes. When we came back in, I first smelled that something was burning, then looked over to the stove to see thick black smoke billowing out of the right rear burner where the heat exhausts from the oven. My first thought was there was something on the burner, but then I realized (duh) the burner wasn't on and looked in the oven -- or tried to, anyway. The same black smoke that was billowing out through the burner came out tenfold when I opened the door -- and I could see a flame about 5 inches high brewing in the right rear of the oven. It's interesting how you can feel panic sneak up on you in a situation like that.

So, while the house filled up with smoke, I called Jason to ask what I could use to put out a fire in the oven because I didn't want to use water and he told me to use the fire extinguisher from the garage -- so I knew we would be buying a new oven no matter what. I put the fire out w/the fire extinguisher, turned on the hood fan and the whole house fan (man, has that thing ever come in handy already) and waited for him to come home. Black bits of crap all over the kitchen because something obviously blew up inside the oven and came out through the exhaust. When Jason came by with his friend, they pulled the oven away from the wall and pulled out the racks to see what caught fire. I thought maybe there was some food on the bottom of the oven that I didn't see when I peeked in there before turning it on, but I'm pretty good about keeping it cleaned up and there was some big piece of something on fire that I thought couldn't be food. I had just baked a chicken dish and some garlic bread in there on Thursday and none of it had spilled or fallen out. There was some plastic part (although I wonder -- plastic, in the oven? Something similar to plastic, I guess) and a U-shaped piece of wire, and I don't even know what the hell they came out of, that was on fire in there. I dunno. All I know is that our cheap-ass POS oven was apparently a fire hazard and we just got extremely lucky -- because it would not be out of the realm of possibility for me to turn the oven on to pre-heat and then take a shower (which I have not yet done today). Jesus. Guess I'd better not do that ever again, even thought it wasn't the situation today. Most unpleasant. And you know, we've been here almost 4 years and every time something goes to hell we find out someone did a hack job putting it in. The oven was no exception. I don't know who the genius was who had the big cut in the wall back there with some black box on the floor, but it pisses me off to think that someone else's carelessness or attempts to save a few bucks could result in us losing everything we own, if not worse.

Anyway, I put the dog in his crate and we went off to Adalberto's so I could hit the drive-through. Got some "super nachos." I think their billing is too high -- they were just okay, not super. Blah.

Now Mushu is eating and I'll take him out again to have a little pee party. At least this time the house should not be on fire when we walk back in! Sheesh!